It is scorchio in London and my skin is beginning to look like the tobacco plant in the above photo. I recently had a conversation with a dermatologist about what sun products are good for the older skin and bizarrely she recommended using a suntan cream for children. She said that she had found that Boots own Soltan product was best and that if you used the one for children it was hypoallergenic and more gentle on the skin. She said that you should apply it regularly, not just once a day or every 8 hours like they suggested and especially after being in the water.
Here is my hat full of recommendations after much experience of trying sticky fake tans and hopeless suncreams – especially for the face:-
We all got burnt whilst in Mexico on our boat trip to swim with the whale sharks. You weren’t allowed to apply sun cream anywhere near them as the chemicals could affect them and then my daughter felt ill so stayed at the back of the boat on the way back and ended up looking like this, which was not only painful, but very disappointing for her as she’s very good at protecting her skin from the sun and had to spend the whole rest of the holiday looking like she was wearing white shorts:-
For the best fake tan my daughter and I have found so far try Tan-Luxe from Space NK. One for The Body and one for The Face. They are self-tan drops that you mix with your own moisturiser so no smell or stickiness and a great light/medium colour emerges in an hour. Very easy and the best bit is you can shove it in your own favourite moisturiser so you can have less creams to worry about!
A product I found thanks to an article on skin cancer in the paper (sorry can’t remember the name to credit you!) from Korres was a brilliant face sun cream and foundation for me on holiday. It’s a colour correcting cream called Wild Rose that has an SPF of 30 but is very thick so my face felt far more protected than usual and I didn’t need to put on lots of different layers. A one stop shop that worked very well. I bought it from a website called Mankind – but sure you can find it elsewhere.
Finally Alpha-H Daily Essential moisturiser is a great SPF 50+ moisturiser to use every day, but it’s not cheap and only comes in a small tube, so doesn’t last very long. It also contains Vitamin E and Aloe Vera supposedly to combat premature ageing, but I would need to use it for longer to see if that selling point worked. Also got from Mankind, who only sell it in a 50ml tube which is tiny.
Please do share any of your secret favourites….I am after a very good Aftersun moisturiser – or body oil that will stop my tan from coming off in unattractive scales! So that my skin doesn’t increasingly look like that tobacco plant!
